Summer On Mars
by albinofrog88
Summary: You wake up one day and suddenly you have a dead best friend who visits you in tinted montages with blood seeping from her head. When she called you Harbor High's Veronica Mars, this wasn't exactly what she had in mind...SS, MR


**Author's Note:** I wrote this right after the season ended, and then forgot about it. Sorry! I don't know whether they'll be a second part to it, but I think enough's said where it can stand on its own. Please review!!

She climbed in through Seth's window, he came in later, they fell asleep and then she saw her. Standing in front of the window was the unmistakable outline of her best friend. Who had just gone to the airport to go to Hawaii. With her boyfriend's best friend and adopted brother. Whose car she could see from the window was not yet back. _Interesting._

"Marissa?"

The figure by the window showed no signs of hearing.

"Are you really there or am I dreaming this? Because as much as I love seeing you, and hanging out with you, and talking to you, it's kinda creepy that I'm dreaming you'd decide to watch over me and Seth while we're both sleeping naked with the covers half off, seemingly waiting for Ryan to come home from driving _you_ to the airport…" her voice trailed off. There was something _off_ about Marissa's hair.

"…and did I mention the moonlight is doing some freaky things to your- _Oh my God_," she gasped., and got up wrapping the covers around herself and walking towards the window. She put out her hand to touch her shoulder but stopped as the figure- Marissa- cocked her head to the side, as if listening to things from a very great distance.

Which, she realized in retrospect- a few seconds later right before she blacked out- she certainly was.

"Summer?" the voice of her best friend asked, somehow managing to sound surprised, confused and in control all in the same breath. "Don't freak out."

The figure of her best friend turned to face her.

"WHAT KIND OF DREAM IS THIS!" she screamed.

And _then_ she fainted.

No way in hell this was another Trey like incident she could help fix-up neatly.

Though her subconscious had definitely been foolish enough to think it was.

* * *

"Hey, technically I warned you. I said you were Harbor's Veronica Mars." 

She heard it two seconds before she woke up. She was in her bed again and apparently the dream had yet to finish. In the corner there sat Marissa, flask in hand, crack on head, blood in hair, staring at her clearly and calmly, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

She had the absurd sudden notion that she had just entered the comic book version of Newport and soon magic credit cards would fly by into her willing hands, ready as always to defend.

And The Ironist snored on… 

"You said it as a crack at me. You were going through an angry phase and was taunting me with it, since I always state the obvious."

Marissa shrugged. "You don't _always_; you're tiny and you're witty. You live in Rich-People Town, California where paternity is always questionable."

Marissa paused, the air crackled.

"You have a dead best friend who visits you in tinted montages with blood seeping from her head."

Summer pulled the covers over her own head and blacked out.

* * *

"You know no matter how many times you do that I'll still be here and time will still stand still." 

"Even you're not that pretty Coop."

"Sadly, no," she paused, "But I _do_ have the distinct advantage of literally being drop **dead** gorgeous." The emphasis on "dead" caught her attention.

She pulled off the covers.

"You call that an advantage?"

Marissa genuially smiled and Summer's heart ached. Now _that_ was a thing she had thought extinct.

"It is when you're trying to schedule a meeting."

"So does that mean you'll leave me alone if I tell you not to come from the land of the dead for another fifty years or so?"

"No it just means if I was evil enough I could make this _seem_ like fifty years, but then have everyone else wake-up like normal."

Summer seemed to consider it.

"Sum! Do you really want to live fifty years apart from Seth? He'd wake-up to the Summer Roberts version of the Nana!"

"Depends…if you wouldn't wake-up at all…"

"I wouldn't wake-up either way."

* * *

"Why do I keep doing that?" 

She had blacked out again.

"It's a natural defense mechanism against death. Normally you're the type of person no one could visit. I had to get special permission and everything." She said the last part in wide-eyed imitation of Taylor.

"And why is that?"

"Because even though I know you can't believe me now- you will. Remember what you see. Tell Seth. Tell Sandy and Kristin. Tell Taylor. Tell anyone you can. Tell them you had a freaky dream and even though it's foolish, you're worried about it. It'll be awhile before news of the car hits Newport. Events are still playing out, Ryan's a distance away, the cell phone has gone up in the flames. You have enough time to make an impact on them. I _need_ you to make an impact on them."

"They'll think I'm crazy."

She nodded. "They will, some of them. But some of them will listen."

She sat curled up in the corner of the bed with her hand gripping an oblivious Seth.

"It'll only be for a day anyways. Then you'll be the psychic best friend. Then you'll just go back to being Summer Roberts from Newport, California."

Summer said nothing. Marissa sighed.

"I'm worried Ryan will take the blame for this. He's saved my ass enough times. If he gives up Volchock then he'll be arrested for robbery. I can't let that happen." She didn't say anything, but Marissa continued anyways. "I need you to say," she paused to take breath and Summer swore she could feel dead tears hit her face. "I need you to say I was calling for James. In your dream. I need you to say I was crying. That you saw Ryan lift me up, but you also saw me behind him screaming 'why' up at the hill. That I said I had loved him, and that I still did. That I mentioned something about 'The Sound of Music'. That in the end I said very clearly that I forgave him. That I was with Johnny now. That I was at peace. That if this is what it cost him to be at peace also, then it was worth something."

Marissa looked away as the tears streamed down her face. "Do you think you could do that Sum? I can't lie to Ryan to his face like that."

Summer looked at the vision of her broken best friend. She held out her arms.

"Oh Coop"

But the vision itself was breaking up and behind her the sun was starting to rise.

"I'm sorry I lied to you too."

Before Summer could hug her, she was gone.

She woke up to the rising sun. Beside her Seth groaned.

"You're still here?" he said, and then realizing how that sounded reiterated. "Not that I don't love waking up with you, it's just, you know _the first day after graduation._ You can't expect my parents not to take advantage of that fact…"

She was up and running before he finished and lo and behold Kirsten was at the door.

"Summer!"

"Mrs. Cohen!" she gasped. "Do you know if Ryan ever got to bed last night? It's just I had this dream…" Both Seth and Mrs. Cohen were looking at her oddly and she blushed bright red, before continuing. "Marissa had this giant crack on the side of her head with blood dripping from it, and the light was all tinted funny where she sat on my bed, and she said she and Ryan had been in some kind of car accident, except I think it wasn't exactly an accident," she said in a rush remembering Marissa's omission of that word. "And Ryan was carrying her out, but it was too late and I saw another Marissa and she was screaming for this guy named James, who _OHMYGODI THINKMURDEREDHER,_ and she said she loved him anyways and she was at peace now, and something about the 'sound of music'…" And then she fainted and Seth caught her.

* * *

"Is it just me, or did the first part sound a little like Summer was channeling Lilly Kane from 'Veronica Mars' in nightmarish land?" 

"It's probably just you mom. She totally sounded like she was channeling Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks with the whole 'Cooper connection thing' to me."

* * *

Scrambling down the hill, Heather fruitlessly tried to find a street sign or landmark of some kind, guilt plainly written over her face at the sight of their burning car. Spotting Marissa's boy toy with her in his arms mumbling, she put her hand on his shoulder and dialed 911. 

"What about Volchock?" he said in a voice so cold that it reminded her of death. She shivered.

"I managed to knock him out shortly before your car fell off the road," she lied.

It wasn't until after seeing the car tip over and hearing the crunch of metal that she had thought to do something, anything.

Ryan just nodded. The way he was clutching Marissa's head was almost as if… _No! _she thought, _don't let yourself think about that._

It took the hospital about two hours to find them in the dark with no visible street signs to tell the disoriented teenagers where, exactly, they were. Heather huddled away from them while they waited.

"He watched 'The Sound of Music' for her," she whispered. Ryan just continued mumbling. "James-Volchock, he seemed to really love her." That stopped him.

"Loved her enough to kill her." Her eyes sparked, ready to say 'you don't know that,' but she saw the look on his face and knew the answer to her earlier fears.

She'd finally done something so fucked up it was irreversible.


End file.
